Current Designer:

John Galliano (Creative Director)

Previous Designer:

Martin Margiela (1988–2009)

To say the name Martin Margiela is to conjure images of stacked-heel tabi-toe boots and blank labels held in place with four visible stitches. The name also evokes an aura of beguiling mystery, for few know what the Belgian designer—fashion’s invisible man—looks or sounds like. He decided, early in his career, to eschew interviews, avoid the press, and communicate in the first person plural (“We . . . ”) via fax.

Margiela’s shield of anonymity—explained by his business partner, Jenny Meirens, as a personal rather than professionaldecision—sometimes infuriated, but consistently fascinated, the media. One of its effects was to focus attention on the clothes themselves, created by a team and credited to Maison Martin Margiela, aka MMM. And what intriguing clothes they were: Recall, for instance, a bricolage vest of wire and porcelain; a shirt made of gloves; a sweater of army surplus socks; doll outfits enlarged to adult proportions; precise replicas of vintage garments; pieces made of salvaged, Scotch-taped plastic bags; and, once, hybrid jackets described by an observer as “two-for-one fur coats, spliced together to make four-sleeved monstrosities.”